For the Time Being: The Pandorica Opens
by Aietradaea
Summary: This one's for x-Avarice-x, who demanded to see the aftermath of my AU of season 5's "The Lodger" with the Master added; read that first. Exactly what it says on the can - this is an AU of "The Pandorica Opens".
1. Wasgij

**Disclaimer:** Don't own Doctor Who or the plot of season 5's "The Pandorica Opens".

**Author's notes: **This is a sequel to my previous season 5 AU: "For the Time Being: The Lodger" (ID 6948966) - pretty much what it says on the can, an AU of season 5 with the Master added. I'd recommend reading that one first - not just for the big twist at the end that will make this one make sense, but also for the backstory of the AU given in the author's note at the beginning. Adding to that backstory, in this AU, the Master encountered River in "Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone"...and as I'm sure you can imagine, they did _not_ get along! In fact, River positively _loathed_ the Master - and as they parted ways after the Angels were gone, she swore that when she saw the Master next, she would kill him for "everything he will do".

Anyway, this goes out to x-Avarice-x, who has been a fantastic and very enthusiastic reviewer of my fics for a while now, and _demanded_ to see the aftermath of the AU-ed "The Lodger". That was pretty light and humourous, but this one's a lot darker and more serious...enjoy! :]

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><p><strong>Earth, Britain – 102:<strong>

Every night sound, every scuffle of some skittering creature through the grass set the young centurion's nerves on edge. Save for the distant rumble of low voices across the encampment, all was silent. The barbarians had fled these parts over a moon ago when the Roman legion had first come marching across the plains and made camp – another conquest, another triumph under the iron belts of the commanders.

It was an uneasy rest, though. Their scouts, patrolling the farthest outskirts of their new domain, had encountered barbarian tribes who spoke in hushed tones of fearsome men of metal and lightning, men who slew without abandon like the cruellest Roman warrior; of lights in the sky, as if the Moon herself had fallen to Earth in the very plains where the army now camped; and of their own primitive superstitions – a bloodthirsty spirit haunting the mighty rocks of nearby Stonehenge, seizing men who wandered alone across the hills. The last scouting party had returned three men down, but whether metal monsters or the elusive Hengeghost were to blame, none could say.

As a rule, the generals discouraged rumour amongst the men – it was the ramblings of uneducated barbarians and laymen and had no place in an army of hardened soldiers. But tonight, there was one rumour that even the generals had lent an ear to: Cleopatra had come.

The young centurion on watch knew the name well. Every citizen of the great Roman Empire knew the name – but mingled with the awed whispers and propaganda of the elite was, for this centurion, more stories than even the old wives could recount. Sometimes, the line between truth and fiction became so blurred that the centurion would stumble mid-sentence, backtrack and excuse himself – but what did it matter when it came to the beautiful Egyptian lover of their Emperor? Some had said she was dead until tonight.

Empires rose and fell, the centurion knew this. Cleopatra would come to die, the Roman Empire would topple and crumble – and thousands of years on, children would read of the reign of Caesar.

The centurion knew this. He remembered it well.

...

**Earth, France – 1890:**

The calm, grey afternoon could have been almost tranquil. A light rain whispered across rough roads, pattering on tiled roofs and trickling down into muddy pools at the corners of the low, stone houses. _Could_ have been tranquil, were it not for the agonized shrieks ringing out through the empty streets, shattering the still air.

Inside one house, in a small, cramped room cluttered with canvases and brushes, easels and jars, a doctor knelt beside one of the greatest artists of the 19th century.

"Vincent, can you hear me?" the doctor was pleading; but curled on the couch, rocking back and forth with paint-stained hands clutching his head, Vincent van Gogh could no more hear the voice than his wild, unseeing eyes could focus on the doctor's face. "Please, Vincent…" At the doctor's back, a woman stood with folded arms, brow creased more in disapproval than concern.

"It's not enough he goes drinking all 'round the town," she tutted. "Now the whole neighbourhood has to listen to his screaming."

"He's very ill, Madame Vernet." Wearily, the doctor turned to her, but she had moved to peer in bewilderment at a painting on an easel beside her.

"Look at this – even worse than his usual rubbish." As the doctor looked, the flickering lamplight glinted briefly off wet paint – this painting was the newest in the room. Curious, he rose and moved up beside Madame Vernet, who shook her head. "What's it supposed to _be_?"

Behind them, the tormented cries rose to terrified wailing, sheer horror written in every line on a face damp with sweat and streaked with tears.

...

**Earth, Britain – 1941:**

A few inquisitive glances passed across Edwin Bracewell as he hurried down the corridor of the Cabinet War Rooms, but the scientist barely heeded them. Under his arm, he clutched a flat, square-shaped package in a black-gloved hand. It had arrived at his laboratory less than an hour ago, and when he had seen what it contained, he had only just remembered to pull on a single glove over his mechanical hand before dashing out the door, still in his white lab coat.

Fortunately, he was still a familiar face to many of the military personnel who walked those dim, smoky corridors, and within minutes, he had secured a private audience with Prime Minister Churchill. In an empty office, he unveiled the contents of his package while Churchill watched in grim silence.

"It was found behind the wall in an attic in France," Bracewell explained, squinting thoughtfully at the painting he had propped up against the back of a chair. "It's genuine – it's a van Gogh."

"Why bring it to me?" Churchill wondered, removing the ever-present cigar from his mouth and pursing his lips.

"Because…it's obviously a message," Bracewell replied. "And you can see who it's for."

"Can't say I understand it," Churchill snorted, replacing the cigar.

"You're not supposed to understand it, Prime Minister – you're supposed to deliver it." Their eyes met; sucking on the cigar, Churchill raised his eyebrows and nodded slowly.

...

**Stormcage Containment Facility – 5145:**

The pealing of a telephone shrilled audibly even over the rumbling of torrential rain that thundered on the roof of the prison. In the dimly lit, concrete-lined corridor, flashes of lightening illuminated the figure of a uniformed guard who strode quickly to answer – watched idly by the occupant of the top-security cell opposite the phone.

It was an internal line, supervisors to guards only within the Stormcage security corps. Top of the range, crystal clear, failproof reception – so even hearing an unfamiliar voice answering him, the guard was more surprised to hear a hiss of static when he raised the phone to his ear and spoke.

"Cell 46?" He paused, listening uncertainly to the crackling words. "The Doctor? You mean Doctor Song?" New as he was, even he knew to turn with a nervous glance to the opposite cell. The inmate, a woman, raised her head in alarm and threw down her book. She leaped up from the bed and ran to the bars.

"Give me that," she snapped, gripping the bars, knuckles white with urgency. "Seriously, just give it to me. I'm entitled to phonecalls." Unsure, the guard checked up and down the corridor. No alarms, no patrolling supervisor, no lockdown; perhaps it was the apparent peace that tipped the guard's caution…or perhaps it was the fact that he was secretly just _slightly_ more nervous of the enigmatic inmate than he was of his supervisor. He approached the cell and handed the phone to River Song, who took it without hesitation and turned her back on him.

"Doctor?" she asked in a low voice.

"No, and neither are you," came the gruff voice of Winston Churchill. "What about that Saxon fellow – is he there?"

"No. They're always together," River answered shortly. There was a moment's pause before she continued, her voice brisk and businesslike. "They're not here – the TARDIS must have rerouted the call to me. Talk quickly – this connection will last less than a minute."

At the cell bars, watching her as she listened intently, the guard mentally shook himself and raised his voice with what he hoped was a tone of authority.

"Doctor Song?" She nodded – although he had the unsettling impression it was not for him – and cut off the phone, lowering her head. "You finished with that?" When she raised her head and turned to him, she wore a calm smile.

"You're new here, aren't you?" she said, walking slowly towards him and reaching through the bars to place a hand on his chest.

"First day." He swallowed hard and forced himself to avert his eyes.

"Then I'm very sorry…" Before he had had a chance to take in the words, she had gripped the front of his padded jacket and pulled him forwards, her lips meeting his with the confidence of…actually, with the confidence of a _very_ good kisser.

By the time the alarms pealed, the kissing abilities of River Song were far from the guard's mind and he held a loaded revolver in his hands, trained unwaveringly in front of him.

"Stay _exactly_ where you are," he ordered. Without removing his eyes from his prisoner, he called out to the group of armed guards who had arrived as backup. "She had the lipstick – the hallucinogenic lipstick. She tried to use it on me." While the guards exchanged glances, he raised one hand and wiped his mouth with an assured laugh. "Your tricks don't work in 'ere, Doctor Song."

And facing unblinking down the barrel of his pistol, mouth fixed in a broad smile, a curly-haired stick figure waved from the whitewashed wall, declaring a single word in a speech bubble:

"Bye!"

...

**The Royal Collection – 5145:**

The Royal Collection – most probably the largest and most ancient art gallery in what remained of British civilization – had fallen somewhat into disrepair in the centuries since humanity took to the stars. Dust coated the smooth, ornate banisters and high flights of stairs that ascended through carved arches to the upper floors; and hanging between marble columns and propped up against walls were tarnished frames, some displaying paintings, others little more than spiderwebs while the canvases of the many ages of British art hung haphazardly by one corner or lay scattered about the floor.

The figure hastening down the stairs in the darkness paid little attention to the priceless works that she passed. Torch beam swinging this way and that, River Song had eyes only for one prize – and there it was, still secure in a hanging frame at just about head height. She reached up and deftly tore it from the frame, and then turned on her heel and jogged back the way she had come.

She had barely half a staircase to go when the lights suddenly flickered on, illuminating a woman in a velvet cloak at the top of the stairs – a woman and the pistol she held pointed unwaveringly in one hand.

"This is the Royal Collection," the woman said coolly, stopping River dead in her tracks. "And I'm the bloody Queen. What are you doing here?" River quickly raised her arms, unable to keep a tremor of tension from her voice as she answered.

"It's about…the Doctor, ma'am. You met him once, didn't you – I know they came here." It was some relief when the Queen lowered the pistol and her face softened into a grin.

"The Doctor?" she repeated. "And the Master – did he survive, then?"

"That…doesn't matter." River's eyes narrowed for the barest moment, and then her face quickly became expressionless. "The Doctor's in trouble – I need to find him."

"Then why are you stealing a painting?" the Queen demanded suspiciously, but her finger was no longer tight on the trigger and River climbed the stairs the rest of the way to hand her the rolled canvas in her hand.

"Look at it. I need to find the Doctor, and I need to show him this." Carefully, the Queen unrolled the delicate canvas, and River waited with bated breath while her chestnut eyes widened in horror and lifted towards River. The two women were unable to suppress a cold shiver of dread that ran down their spines at the image spread before them.

...

**The Maldovarium – 5145:**

Happy hour had never really applied at the Maldovarium – not when the patrons of the spaceport bar came from every corner of space…and _time_, if the rumours told true. They so very rarely did, but what Dorium had heard was enough to have him chortling genially at the coy small talk of the elegantly dressed woman opposite him in a booth shaded behind beaded curtains. Still, business was business, and time was money – more than ever tonight.

"Eh, now," he began, leaning forward with a wink. "Word on the belt is…you're looking for time travel."

"Are you selling?" Oh, she didn't mess around, this one. He raised his eyebrows and clicked his fingers sharply, and the beaded curtains parted to admit a short, stocky alien with a pointed, ridged head. It clicked harshly and held out a plain wooden box in its clawed hands, which Dorium took and placed gently on the table.

"A vortex manipulator." He lowered his voice and chuckled. "Fresh off the wrist of a handsome Time Agent." On opening the box, his nose wrinkled in disgust and he closed it quickly, pushing it back towards the alien. "I said _off_ the wrist," he sighed; the alien took the box with an apologetic gurgle and departed. Taking a draught of wine from the glass on the table, he continued. "Not cheap, Doctor Song. Have you brought me a pretty toy?" With a satin-gloved hand, River reached up to her ear and unclasped a jewelled earring that jingled softly as she held it out.

"This is a Calisto pulse," she said. "It can disarm microexplosives from up to twenty feet."

"What kind of…microexplosives?" he asked curiously, taking another sip of wine. River's lipsticked smile broadened, and a moment later, he found out why.

"The kind I just put in your wine…"


	2. Bleeding Hearts and Artists

**TARDIS – Time Vortex:**

"Oh, stop moping."

The time rotor had been pumping for most of the day and the Doctor had been moving listlessly about the console for much of that time, but it seemed that no destination was forthcoming and Amy was, quite frankly, bored. There could have been any room she desired in the TARDIS – probably was, somewhere – but somehow, the time capsule just felt _empty_. Lifeless. There were times when she couldn't quite shake the feeling that there ought to have been someone there to share it with her, someone by her side exploring the winding corridors and bizarre menagerie of rooms… Even if the sensation was gone almost as quickly as it had struck, it still nagged at her – and the Doctor's distracted silence wasn't helping.

"_Moping_?" the Doctor exclaimed, his face the picture of indignation. "Why on Earth would I be moping? I've got a time capsule and the whole of time and space to save. We could go anywhere, do anything…"

"So, take me somewhere."

"All right, then." The Doctor gave the wheel under his hand a final spin and turned to face Amy, leaning on the edge of the console and tugging the lapels of his jacket. "Where would you like to go?"

"Ooh, I don't know," Amy shrugged. "Aren't there any…big, unsolved mysteries out there in space? Something to make you feel all clever – something all…big and shiny…"

"Big and shiny…" A thoughtful expression passed across the Doctor's face. "A big, shiny unsolved mystery…" Not quite the wording Amy had had in mind, but a gleam had at last entered the Doctor's eye and she gripped the handrail at her back – and not a moment too soon, as the Doctor suddenly whirled and threw several levers in quick succession, sending the TARDIS lurching out of the time vortex. "A big, shiny unsolved mystery – can't _believe_ I didn't think of this before! Come on."

"Where are we?"

"Planet One. The oldest planet in the universe – and there's a cliff of pure diamond, and according to legend, on the cliff, there's writing. Letters fifty feet high. A message from the dawn of time, and no-one knows what it says, 'cause no-one's ever translated it. 'Til today…"

"What happens today?" Amy asked happily, and the Doctor reached out and tapped her on the nose.

"Us." He hopped down the stairs in a single bound, and Amy was glad to see the spring returned to his step. "The TARDIS can translate anything – all we have to do is open the doors and read the very first words in recorded history…" Beaming, Amy followed him out the doors to step up beside him when he stopped short.

There were the cliffs of diamond, as promised, towering over a lush, otherworldly landscape of succulent trees and gigantic toadstools like beach umbrellas sprouting out of the ground. And there were the words, as promised, clear as day and perfectly readable to the two time travellers:

HELLO SWEETIE

A set of temporal coordinates followed; the Doctor's mouth curved upwards in bemusement as he took note of them, and then with a laugh of disbelief, Amy followed him back into the TARDIS and they were off, rocketing through the time vortex. Gleefully sidestepping around the console, his hands darting deftly across the controls, it was a matter of minutes before the Doctor once again pulled the TARDIS out of the vortex and onto solid ground.

They emerged onto a thinly wooded hilltop lightly cloaked in mist. Eyes fixed on his watch, the Doctor was rapidly explaining the coordinates to Amy.

"…Earth, Britain, 1:02am. No, pm. No…" Finally, he raised his head and took in their surroundings for the first time. "…AD."

Spread out across the plains before them, lined up in rows of military precision, were hundreds upon hundreds of neat, white tents. Distantly, horses whinnied and steel clanked as figures strode between the tents, the late afternoon sunlight glittering off their polished armour.

"That's a Roman legion…" Amy realized aloud, staring in astonishment.

"Well, yeah," said the Doctor as though it were a perfectly natural observation. "The Romans invaded Britain several times during this period."

"Oh, I know – my favourite topic at school." Amy didn't bother to hide the satisfaction that entered her voice and raised an eyebrow. "Invasion of the hot Italians. Yeah, I did get marked down for the title…" she added at the perplexed look the Doctor sent her. Their attention was quickly called away, however, as a clattering of steel announced the arrival of a rather out-of-breath Roman centurion – _a real, live Roman_, Amy thought to herself – jogging up the hill, saluting and dropping onto a bended knee before the Doctor.

"Hail, Caesar."

"Hi," the Doctor replied, and paused expectantly.

"Welcome to Britain," the centurion puffed. "We are honoured by your presence."

"Well, you're only human." The centurion lowered his head even further; Amy rolled her eyes. "Arise, Roman…person…"

"Why does he think you're Caesar?" she muttered in the Doctor's ear. Raising his head, the centurion blinked at them with slightly dazed eyes and the corner of his mouth, smudged with a trace of pink lipstick, curved up in a serene smile.

"Cleopatra will see you now."

Amy's eyes were as round as saucers by the time they had reached the edge of the encampment, where a large tent in rich, sumptuous red velvet and golden silk hangings stood slightly apart from the uniform white tents of the Roman army. They stooped to enter and found themselves in the presence of a woman seated on a throne of plump cushions, attended reverentially by two men in simple cloth tunics. A face framed by crimped black hair smiled back at them, kohl-lined eyes twinkling as she raised a golden goblet for one of the attendants to refill. For a moment, Amy thought she saw her angling her head slightly as though to glance over the Doctor's shoulder, but then the curtain fell closed after them and her gaze returned to his face.

"Hello, sweetie."

"River!" Amy recognized the woman immediately, even with the wig and the elaborate jewellery that covered most of her head and body. "Hi!" The Doctor's greeting was not so cheery – he stepped up in front of her and lowered his voice sternly.

"You graffitied the oldest cliff-face in the universe."

"_You_ wouldn't answer your phone," she shot back. Abruptly, she clapped sharply and the attendants vanished, backing out of the tent and bowing low without a word. She reached down beside the chair and picked up a rolled canvas, which she held out to the Doctor.

"What's this?"

"It's a painting," she answered. "Your friend Vincent. One of his final works." The Doctor snatched the painting and all three gathered around a table where he unrolled it and spread it out. "He had visions, didn't he? I thought you ought to know about this one." Again, her eyes darted around the rest of the tent and her lips, pressed together in a grim line, showed the faintest trace of a smile – but when Amy caught sight of the painting on the table, all else fled from her mind.

It was the TARDIS – even in Vincent's distinctive streaked, impressionist style, the shape of the familiar blue police box was unmistakeable. But something was wrong – the solid form was fragmented, breaking apart at the seams in a swirl of destructive orange and yellow, splintering out into the blue-black of deepest, emptiest space. At the very heart of the painting, a shattering explosion of white-hot at the centre of the TARDIS itself, violent splashes of bright red stood out starkly, flowing outwards from the broken edges of the TARDIS as though…

"Doctor…" Amy's words choked in her throat and she felt her blood run cold. "Doctor, it looks like it's…bleeding." Without a word, the Doctor straightened up and ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head slowly; Amy looked to River instead. "What's happening to it?"

"It might not be that literal." River's words should have been reassuring, but her grey eyes were like steel. "But it could still be some kind of warning. Anyway, this is where he wanted you – date and map reference on the door sign, see?" Amy bent over the painting to peer at the tiny lettering on the painted door of what remained of the TARDIS. Behind her, the Doctor had collapsed into a chair, pinching the bridge of his nose, clearly deep in thought.

"Does it have a title?" he spoke up suddenly.

"'The Pandorica Opens'," River replied.

"The Pandorica?" Amy echoed, puzzled. "What is it?"

"A box, a cage, a prison?" River guessed. "It was built to contain the most feared thing in all the universe…"

"…and it's a fairy tale, a legend – it _can't_ be real!" the Doctor interrupted, rising to his feet and beginning to pace up and down the length of the stuffy tent.

"If it is real, it's here, and it's opening – and it's got something to do with your TARDIS." The Doctor hardly appeared to be listening to River – gathering up an armful of scrolls from about the tent, he set them down roughly on the table on top of the painting, hiding the chilling image from view, and spread one out. "Hidden obviously, buried for centuries…you won't find it on a map."

"No." The Doctor glanced up at her, and Amy saw that he had indeed opened out a roughly drawn map of ancient middle Britain. "But if you bury the most dangerous thing in the universe…you'd want to remember where you put it."

Their heads moved together over the map and Amy found herself nudged to one side, waiting and biting her nails anxiously while River and the Doctor traced their fingers over the faint lines and whispered rapidly to each other. Within just a few minutes, another sharp clap from River called the attendants instantly back to her side, startling Amy.

"I will require three horses saddled and bridled for a swift ride to Stonehenge," she commanded them. They bowed – first to River, and then to Amy and the Doctor, and appeared about to repeat the ritual to River before she clapped again and they scurried from the tent. Some minutes later, the heavy stumping of boots outside the tent preceded the grizzled head of the gruff stablemaster entering the tent. He too bowed, as well as he could in his stiff leather apron.

"My finest steeds are being saddled as I speak, my lady," he said, eyes respectfully averted from River, although they moved surreptitiously over Amy and the Doctor. "And the legion's finest swordsmen sharpen their blades-" River cut him off with a raised hand.

"We ride alone."

"Then…surely my lady's slaves were mistaken," he stammered, "but they said my lady and her…guests…ride for Stonehenge."

"And they were correct." River fixed him with her most haughty glare and raised a pencilled eyebrow. "But _I_ will be touched by no phantom. Do you doubt that the gods ride on the wind with Cleopatra? I require no further protection."

"Of…of course, my lady. Forgive me, my lady." Still stuttering apologies, he stumbled from the tent. The moment he was gone, River began pushing aside the cushions of her throne, searching among them.

"Phantom?" Amy inquired of the Doctor, who shrugged.

"They call it the Hengeghost," said River, pulling out a pair of riding boots from behind the throne. "A local superstition – nothing more. Certainly nothing _we_ need to worry about." On the last words, she reached into one of the boots and pulled out a solid-looking revolver. Ignoring the Doctor's disapproving frown, she twirled it deftly in one hand with a cool smile.

Before being shooed out of the tent for River to change out of her light silk robe, the Doctor had grabbed Vincent's painting off the table – and once outside, to Amy's shock, he folded it into a small square and slipped it casually into his pocket.


	3. Stones and Bones Alone

River and the Doctor set a gruelling pace when the three set off for Stonehenge. Galloping at full pelt across the grassy, open plains towards the ancient monument, it was all Amy could do to cling onto the reins while her horse followed the other two. Overhead, grey clouds rolled in across the horizon; the air was heavy and warm, and by the time they reached the ring of towering stone blocks, the horses' coats shone with sweat. They dismounted, tethered the animals to a sturdy shrub and followed the Doctor up the gentle slope and between the mighty rocks to the centre of the Henge.

Staring about her, Amy couldn't help but notice with amazement and a trace of disappointment that it looked much the same as it always had in postcards and photographs from her own time, lichens and wind-dried mosses mottling the grey of the weathered rocks. While the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began waving it in the air above some of the fallen rocks, she reached out and ran her hand down the nearest one.

"How come it's not new?" she wondered aloud.

"Because it's already old." River, now dressed in a modern fleece jacket with her gun in a holster hanging from a thick belt, had pulled out some sort of handheld computer that emitted high-pitched bleeps as she touched the screen. "It's been here thousands of years. No-one knows exactly how long."

"O.K., this…Pandorica thing," said Amy. The Doctor now appeared to be scanning the standing rocks with the screwdriver, and wasn't paying the slightest attention to the two women. "Last time we saw you, you warned us about it after we climbed out of the Byzantium." With a warning wink, River raised a gloved finger to her lips.

"Spoilers."

"No, but…" Amy persisted. "You told the Doctor you'd see him again 'when the Pandorica opens'."

"Maybe I did – but I haven't yet – but I will have." Evasive as ever, River turned away, raising her device and calling out to the Doctor, "Doctor? I'm picking up fry particles, everywhere – energy weapons discharged on this site." The Time Lord made no reply – he was kneeling in the grass, apparently examining something, and Amy and River hurried over.

It was a metal object, about the size of a saucer – not the roughly hammered iron of the Celts, nor the polished steel of the Romans, but a glossy, black metal like nothing Amy had ever seen – spiderwebbed with fine gold tracings like a computer circuit. A tangle of delicate, gold and black wires sprouted from the centre of the square core and divided into four bundles, each of which wound down a jointed metal appendage at the four corners like veins and arteries on a limb; when the Doctor picked up the object and flipped it over, Amy half expected the appendages to flex like crab's claws. The other side was unimpressive – an irregularly-shaped piece of the black metal with a single gold line along one side as though it had been broken off something and welded onto the top for strength.

"Doctor, what is that thing?" Amy asked, and it was some seconds before he replied.

"Clever," he said simply. "Very clever." He chewed his lip thoughtfully, and then raised his head to eye River's scanner. "Energy weapons, you said – well of course, mightiest warrior in history, half the galaxy's going to want a piece of this Pandorica, probably been a few fights over it. What do you make of _this_, though?" River knelt beside him, held her scanner over the strange object and tapped in another command; it responded with a whirr and she held it close to her face to read the screen.

"Vortex radiation."

"Right. Right…" The Doctor pushed himself to his feet, replaced the screwdriver in his pocket and began once again circling the Henge, this time inspecting the rocks closely, sometimes touching them with the tips of his fingers as if searching for something.

"Vortex?" Amy repeated quietly to River. "What – like, _time_ vortex?"

"Yes," River confirmed, and raised her voice before continuing – for the benefit of the Doctor, it occurred to Amy. "Stolen technology, most likely. There _have_ been plenty of civilizations who acquired the ability to travel in time."

"Bingo!" the Doctor exclaimed suddenly, and the two hurried over to where he gestured to the slab that lay in the very centre of the ring. "Someone- …some_thing_'s been here – right here, see?" He pointed to a corner of the rock; peering closely, Amy could see where the lichen had been scraped away at several points by something sharp and solid. "And whatever's been _here_…has also been here and here and here," he practically skipped around the slab, pointing to the other three corners, "and it's recent, _very_ recent…well, should've known, really – big, deadly secret thing – of _course_ he'd-"

"So there are three more of those devices," River cut in. She was no longer smiling, although the Doctor was grinning from ear to ear.

"Yes. Yes – three more _things_. And a controller, I should think." He hopped over a boulder to where the first had been found, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "This one's going to need a few repairs… River, do you have any fishing line?"

While Amy and River hunted around the rocks and grass of Stonehenge for any further sign of alien technology, the Doctor sat himself cross-legged on the central slab with the first device before him, the sonic screwdriver in one hand and an assortment of tools raided from the saddle pack of River's horse in the other. As the evening wore on, the three other devices were located one by one, along with two "controllers". The controllers were just as alien to Amy as the devices, but the Doctor merely nodded when she brought the first one over to him, as though it were exactly what he had been expecting. They were made of the same black and gold metal, welded haphazardly together into a circular shape slightly larger than the devices and without the claw-like appendages. Their most distinctive feature, though, was a glass dome on the top, the size of a spread hand. Once the sun had set and they worked by the light of a lamp from River's pack, the dome of one controller appeared to emit a faint purple luminescence that grew brighter as the Doctor reconnected the intricate lattice of wires on the base, reflecting eerily in his green eyes. The other controller, he set aside – it must have been broken beyond repair: the dome on top was shattered and the gold pattern appeared blurred and twisted around the edge of the dome, as if it had been melted.

River maintained her stony silence; the Doctor, on the other hand, was more animated than Amy had seen him in days, absorbed in the strange technology, and she caught snatches of muttering as she passed him:

"…oh, now that's _very_ good – unifocal electroencephaloconduction – blimey, try saying that when you're drunk…wonder if there's a bit missing here…ooh, yes, this one's _definitely_ broken – that must've hurt…"

Eventually, the four clawed devices were clamped onto the four corners of the slab and the Doctor gently placed the intact controller in the dead centre, measuring the distance to the corners with a length of fishing line that he seemed to have procured from his own pocket.

"Telepathically controlled," he explained. "One hand on that panel there and these clamps do the work. Easy peasy. Well, not _that_ easy – but luckily, _we_ have my brain…and Amy Pond."

"Me?" Amy blinked, unsure if she had heard correctly.

"Yes, you, Amy Pond." The Doctor began walking slowly around the slab, his voice dropping to a low, secretive whisper. "The Pandorica…a fairy tale, right…beneath…our feet. Don't tell me you don't want to know what's down there…" With a laugh, Amy held out a hand and the Doctor took it with the air of an old-fashioned gentleman, helping her step up onto the slab. She crouched beside the controller, River and the Doctor stepped back, and with bated breath, she placed her hand on the glowing dome.

Immediately, she felt it spark to life, neon-pink sparks wrapping around her fingers and holding her hand tightly on the cold glass. A green light lit up on each of the controllers, one by one, and there was a click as the claws tightened on the rock. Then, rumbling and grinding like ancient machinery, the slab began to move, sliding slowly aside with Amy perched on the top and coming to rest beside a rectangular hole – _like a grave_, the thought passed through Amy's mind. It was no grave, though – the energy pulsing from the dome under her hand dimmed, and when she stood to join the Doctor, she saw that a flight of stone steps at their feet led down further than she could make out in the darkness.

"The Underhenge," the Doctor murmured.

The air beneath the earth was cold and musty and smelled of damp. Dust lay thick across the ground; each step they took sent up a little flurry of it, until it drifted like smoke through the beam of River's torch. Spiderwebs hung like tattered, gossamer curtains from the low roof of the passageway – Amy ducked to avoid them, but the Doctor and River pushed them aside.

At the bottom of the stairs, the passageway opened out into a craggy cave where a brazier torch had been stood up in the ground. Lighting it with his sonic screwdriver and raising it to illuminate the rest of the cave, the Doctor saw that the wall they faced was in fact two immense wooden doors, one of which was splintered and broken at about head height on the edge and pushed open just enough to slip through the gap. A beam of wood lay on the ground, dark and distinct against the undisturbed dust, and a row of empty brackets on the doors were clear of spiderwebs, one hanging loose where the door was broken.

Hearts in their mouths, the three time travellers squeezed through the gap and emerged into a cavern many times larger than the one they had just passed through – a huge hall, with narrow beams of moonlight from outside streaming through narrow gaps in the ceiling far above their heads and filtering through centuries of dust and cobwebs to fall on an object that sent a bone-chilling shiver through Amy. Even though the Doctor's torch only cast its flickering orange light partway across the cavern, she could make out a humanoid form lying face down in the dust, its arms and legs almost unnaturally straight, its head turned away.

River was the first to step forwards. Her expression was indecipherable, and the firelight danced wildly in her eyes as she approached the still form and turned on her electric torch. To Amy's surprise – and no small amount of relief – the clear white light reflected back off what seemed to be smooth steel. A robot.

"It's a Cyberman," River called back, and curiosity now ignited, Amy followed the Doctor forwards for a closer look. But whatever a Cyberman was, she didn't get the chance to find out, as another object came into view when the Doctor raised his brazier torch – a solid, grey cube, taller than a man and adorned on each side by a circle of indecipherable, engraved patterns.

"The Pandorica…" they breathed as one.

"More than just a fairy tale," River added as they crept closer, step by surreal step. In an awed whisper, the Doctor began to speak as he reached the Pandorica and ran his fingertips across the indentations.

"There was a goblin or a…trickster…or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it or hold it or reason with it. One day, it would just…drop out of the sky and tear down your world."

"How did it end up in there?" Amy asked tentatively.

"You know fairy tales. A powerful wizard tricked it."

"I hate wizards in fairy tales," River snorted, taking the brazier torch from the Doctor and holding it up to see the rest of the cavern.

"So it's kind of like Pandora's box, then?" Amy put in. "Almost the same name." Her gaze followed the torchlight and she saw that four massive stone pillars supported the roof.

"Sorry, what?" came the Doctor's voice from around the other side of the Pandorica, accompanied by the high-pitched buzzing of the sonic screwdriver.

"The story," Amy replied. "Pandora's Box, with all the worst things in the world in it. That was my favourite book when I was a kid." The buzzing of the screwdriver stopped, and to Amy's confusion, the Doctor reappeared from around the corner, staring intently at her.

"What's wrong?"

"Your favourite school topic, your favourite story…" he frowned. "Never ignore a coincidence… Unless you're busy, in which case, always ignore a coincidence." He shook his head and turned back to the Pandorica, leaving Amy feeling bewildered.

"So…can you open it?"

"Easily," the Doctor breezed. "Anyone can break _into_ a prison – but I'd rather know what I'm going to find first."

"You won't have long to wait." River had placed the brazier torch in a stand, pulled out her handheld scanner again and joined the Doctor by the Pandorica. "It's already opening. There are layers and layers of security protocols in there, and they're being disabled one by one – like it's being…unlocked from the inside." Eyes wide as they followed the readings on the scanner, she put her ear to the patterned side of the cube as if to hear something working its way out.

"How long do we have?" asked the Doctor, and Amy had a sneaking suspicion there was just as much excited curiosity in his voice as trepidation.

"Hours at the most."

"What kind of security?"

"Everything. Deadlocks, time stops, matter lines…"

Amy couldn't be certain what caused her to turn her head suddenly towards the door they had entered through – perhaps a noise, although when she tilted her head to listen, she could make out nothing over the voices of River and the Doctor.

"What could need all that?"

"What could get past all that?"

She found her attention straying to the motionless form of the Cyberman in the dust. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the gloom in the cavern, she could distinguish features on its expressionless face, and although she had never before encountered a Cyberman, she could tell that it was damaged. The metal around the hollows that formed its eyes was blackened and blotchy; in its slit of a mouth, thin slivers of shattered glass were visible over what could have once been a circuit but was now little more than a twisted lump of charred plastic; and the centre of its chest was a patch of blackish-blue, as though a blowtorch had been held to the solid steel. Energy weapons, she remembered the Doctor mentioning, and fights; briefly she wondered what had been the aliens that had defeated this Cyberman and still left without the Pandorica. Or, for that matter, whether they had left at all – and she felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck as River's earlier words to the Roman stablemaster passed through her mind. If there was anywhere that she had seen on Earth or in space where she could have believed in ghosts, this cavern would have been it…

The voices of River and the Doctor continued, and dragging herself away from the macabre sight of the Cyberman, Amy rose to join them.

"So…" she began. "The Pandorica opens. How could Vincent have known about it? He won't even be born for centuries." The Doctor held out his screwdriver, stepped away from the mysterious box and revolved slowly on the spot. There must have been the faintest discernable change in the whining buzz, as his eyes widened and he hurried over to the nearest stone pillar.

"The stones!" he exclaimed, pacing between two of the pillars. "These stones are great big transmitters broadcasting a warning to everyone, everywhere, to every time zone: the Pandorica is opening."

"Doctor…everyone, everywhere?" River called over uncertainly.

"Even poor old Vincent heard it," he said. "Among other things…"

"Doctor?" River insisted. "You said _everyone_ can hear it…so who else is coming?"

"_Exactly_!" he burst out, spinning to face them. "Who would be interested in the deadliest thing in all of Creation, who could have gotten hold of technology like those clamps, who… Well, I thought I knew, didn't I – I thought I'd be stopping him, yet again, but it was just a _stupid_ Cyberman." He kicked the leg of the robot hard and turned away in disgust.

"Doctor, listen to me," River snapped. "The Master is _not_ here. We need to find out what this Pandorica is and what it has to do with your TARDIS. I can fold back the signal from these transmitting stones."

"Fine. Fine, yes, do it…" Shoulders hunched, the Doctor resumed his pacing, and Amy watched, perplexed. Time Lords...she wondered if she would _ever_ have them figured out.

"Doctor, you need to sonic these stones." River's voice broke through Amy's thoughts, and apparently the Doctor's too, as he jumped and obediently aimed the screwdriver at the pillar that River held her scanner to. "Stonehenge has been transmitting for a while – so who's heard?" As he moved between the pillars, River's scanner began to beep – and after several seconds, her face paled and she turned to the Doctor.

"Around this planet," she said breathlessly, "there are at least two thousand starships."

"'At _least_'?" Amy echoed in disbelief, and River shook her head.

"Two thousand, twenty thousand thousand, a million – I don't know, there's too many readings."

"What kind of starships?" the Doctor demanded. Right on cue, the speakers on River's scanner kicked in and the question answered itself with the sound of grating, metallic voices that were chillingly familiar to Amy.

"_Maintaining orbit_."

"_I obey_."

"_Shield cover compromised_…"

"Daleks," she realized. "Those are Daleks."

"..._scan commencing_…"

"_Launch preliminary armament protocol_..."


	4. Top Tanks

At first, it seemed as though the Doctor could only stare in horror. Amy's mind darted back to the first time she had encountered the Daleks. The Master had been petrified of them – she had never seen him so vulnerable; but the Doctor…the Doctor, she had never seen so _furious_, livid with white-hot rage, burning with a hatred she could not possibly comprehend. She wondered if he might lose control like that again...she wondered if she ought to be afraid of that.

"O.K..." he began slowly. "O.K., right – two thousand Dalek starships. And one Cyberman. Blimey – no wonder the Cyberman came out worst off... River, what else are you getting? Come on – anything else I should know about?"

"Cyberships," she answered promptly.

"More Cybermen! Excellent!" He clapped his hands together in apparent delight. "That makes things a lot easier – we just turn them against each other, start a fight. How many Cyberships did you say?"

"I didn't." River was watching the Doctor with more than a little unease evident on her face, and Amy could hardly blame her.

"Excellent. This ought to be very interesting…now all we need are some-"

"Sontarans."

"Yes, they'll do."

"No, really – Doctor, there are Sontaran battleships. And Terileptil…" The Doctor barely appeared to be listening, but River continued reading from the screen in her hand, "…Nestene, Drahvin, Sycorax…" Even as the earth began to rumble beneath their feet, the Doctor once again approached the Pandorica, pressing his hand flat against the cool grey stone of its smooth side.

"What _are_ you…?" A violent tremor of the ground snapped him out of his reverie, and he and Amy followed River back through the gap in the heavy doors, up the stairs and out into the crisp night air.

The first thing that struck the three as they raised their eyes to the sky was the _noise_. High above Stonehenge, the tranquil blanket of night had become a seething kaleidoscope of activity – a hundred, a thousand different craft, whirling in from the farthest reaches of space and taking up stations in the sky. Engines whirred and whistled, growled and groaned; lights flashed and flickered as the swarms of spaceships turned glowing spotlights on the low hill.

Instinctively, a stunned Amy turned immediately to the Doctor for reassurance.

"What do we do?"

"Doctor, everything that ever hated you is coming here tonight," River said gravely.

"Not everything…" The Doctor's voice was barely audible over the tremendous cacophony from the spaceships overhead.

"Please, Doctor." Desperation entered River's voice. "There are a hundred different alien races up there who would _not_ hesitate to kill you to get to this Pandorica. You can't win – you can't even fight. You have to stop waiting – just _run_."

"But…but _where_?" He stared about him wildly – and then his eyes caught the twinkling of lights across the plains. "Ah…no – no, we don't need to run. Not yet. We have the greatest military machine in the history of the universe."

"The Pandorica?" Amy guessed.

"No. The Romans."

...

The ride back to the Roman camp was over in even less time than that afternoon's journey to Stonehenge. River had left the saddle bags with all her equipment back at Stonehenge with the Doctor and Amy, and set off without delay, driven by urgency to push her horse without mercy.

On arriving, she slid from the horse and hurried straight for her tent – only to find her way firmly blocked by the crossed halberds of two soldiers. Escorted under armed guard to the tent, where the commander of the legion had now taken up residence, her blaster pistol in its holster still bumped reassuringly against her hip even while the soldiers roughly searched her for daggers and swords. Even if she had been armed with a bandolier of throwing knives, she suspected they would have still let her through – overhead, the bangs and whistles of the invading spaceships continued like some otherworldly fireworks display, and many of the centurions were clearly scared out of their wits.

The commander was, she thought to herself, the sort of man who, heading an invasion in the 21st century, would have looked at a tank and asked how big the enemies' were. He was not an unintelligent man, though; he would see reason, with some persuasion.

"So," he growled by way of greeting when River stood before him in her tent. "I return to my command after one week and discover we've been playing host to Cleopatra – who's in Egypt. And _dead_."

"Yes – funny how things work out," River replied calmly. She could hear the rumble of another approaching ship, and sure enough, moments later it howled overhead, close enough that they felt the ground tremble.

"The sky is falling, and you make jokes?" The commander was incredulous. "Who are you?"

"When you fight barbarians," River said, "what must they think of you?"

"Oh, riddles now?" the commander scoffed. River was undeterred.

"Where do they think you come from?" Drawing his sword in what was clearly supposed to be a threatening gesture, the commander's voice rose in undisguised aggression.

"A place more deadly and more powerful and more impatient than their tiny minds can imagine," he spat. In one fluid movement, before the commander or guards had a chance to react, River drew her blaster, aimed and fired – straight past the commander to instantly disintegrate a cabinet with unerring accuracy.

"Where do _I_ come from?" she asked of them as they quailed. "Your world has visitors. You're all barbarians now."

"What is that?" The commander was the first to regain his voice, and pointed at River's blaster with a trembling finger. "Tell me, what?"

"A fool would say the work of the gods," River replied. "But you've been a soldier too long to believe there are gods watching over us. There is, however, a man – and tonight, he's going to need your help."

"Sir?" A hesitant voice at the commander's back caused him to turn, and River watched with no small amount of impatience while he excused himself and moved to the door of the tend to speak briefly in an undertone with a centurion who stood just outside, his face concealed by the darkness. Then, the commander turned back to River.

"Well," he said, sounding mildly surprised. "It seems you have a volunteer."

...

The controller for the devices to enter the Underhenge must have been knocked off the slab, probably in the confusion when they had re-emerged, as it was nowhere to be seen. Luckily, the massive slab of stone was still beside the hole and Amy and the Doctor were able to once again descend the dank staircase and squeeze through the door to the hall containing the Pandorica. While the Doctor continued his examination of the mysterious box in anxious silence, Amy busied herself lighting more brazier torches to illuminate the whole hall, and then seated herself on a boulder to watch the Doctor running his sonic screwdriver along the ring of engravings on the side of the Pandorica.

Eventually, after a good half an hour of nothing but the buzz of the screwdriver and the rumbling like a heavy thunderstorm of the spaceships outside, Amy could bear it no longer.

"So," she said, apparently startling the Doctor, as he jumped. "What's this got to do with the TARDIS?"

"Nothing, as far as I know," the Doctor shrugged.

"But…Vincent's painting…" Amy shook her head. "The TARDIS – it looked like it was sort of…exploding. And there was all that…blood. What's going to happen to it?"

"One problem at a time," the Doctor chided her. "There's forcefield technology inside this box. If I can enhance it all over Stonehenge – could buy us half an hour."

"What good is half an hour?" Amy demanded.

"There are fruit flies that live on Hoppledom Six that live for twenty minutes – and they don't even mate for life…" The Doctor trailed off, glancing over his shoulder, and Amy found herself following his gaze. For a moment, she could have sworn she heard a faint click. Save for the dancing shadows cast by the torches, all was still, and after a second or two, the Doctor turned back to the Pandorica. "There was going to be a point to that," he muttered. "I'll get back to you." With a sigh, Amy sat back and scowled at the back of his head.

"Do you think Mister Saxon would be able to figure out what's in there?" she asked after another several minutes of the awkward silence. The Doctor gave a short, mirthless laugh.

"That would be the _last_ thing we need, him showing up now." Amy arched an eyebrow, trying to catch his eye.

"Oh? Then why were you so upset that he wasn't here?"

"Upset?" the Doctor snorted. Still avoiding her gaze, he rummaged in his jacket pocket and pulled out the communicator River had left them. "Right, quiet now – I have to call River. Need the TARDIS – I have to get-" He was cut off by Amy clearing her throat loudly, and with a sigh, set the communicator down beside him. "Because this is right up his street," he said quietly, eyes still averted. "He would _never_ pass up on a thing like this – the only possible reason he wouldn't be here is if he's…"

"Oh… Sorry." All of a sudden, Amy's heart felt inexplicably heavy, almost as though she, too, had lost someone close to her, and somehow she couldn't quite convince herself that the feeling stemmed from the loss of the Master. It was strange – when she thought about it, he had been a part of her life just as much as the Doctor – and yet, he remained practically a stranger to her. There had always been something distant about him, something almost withdrawn, even when he was hurtling around the TARDIS to earsplitting disco music; he was aloof, the Doctor was evasive, and now it was hard to imagine that he was probably gone for good. No, there was more to Amy's sense of grief than that – more to the lump that now pressed on her throat – and she felt, passing through her mind's eye like a half-forgotten dream, a hazy recollection that slipped away when she reached out for it…a glaring, white light bathing a form lying so deathly still…

…and then it was gone, and the Doctor was meeting her gaze with concern in his eyes.

"Something bothering you, Amy?"

"No – no, I…" She shook her head. "I mean, it's just… I know he wasn't well, but…he's _gone_…" Just as the Doctor was about to turn his head away, she opened her mouth again, and the words slipped out before she had quite realized it: "Doctor, you know that ring you had?" Now where had that thought come from? Of all the things to come to mind, it was that little velvet box she had come across in the Doctor's jacket pocked the other day, and the elegant gem inside – just like she had always imagined the perfect engagement ring to look, it was.

"Yes – what about it?"

"Oh – nothing…" Suddenly uncomfortable, Amy tried to backtrack. "I don't know – it's just…"

"You haven't forgotten, Amy." The faintest trace of a smile passed across the Doctor's mouth. "Not completely, not ever."

"But…I don't understand." To her confusion, she found tears welling in her eyes, stifling her words. "Why would I forget about that ring?" Still smiling that sad, lonely smile, the Doctor rose, dusting off his trousers and straightening his jacket cuffs.

"Sometimes, Amy, we just forget things – and it's almost like it never happened. But it did – it happened to someone, somewhere, and it always leaves its mark." He slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, and Amy was surprised to see him draw out the little ring box – and even more surprised when he handed it to her. "Where's the mark, Amy?" She opened it uncertainly, half expecting to see some sort of flaw on the ring inside – even though she knew without a doubt that surely it was as flawless as the day she had set eyes on it…and the tears brimming in her eyes no longer stung, they spilled over and caressed her cheeks like the tender touch of a lover's warm fingertips.

"Doctor…" she choked. "Doctor, why am I feeling so…"

"Shh," he whispered, turning away from the Pandorica and towards her. "Don't force it, Amy. Memory is a funny old thing – you wouldn't want to disturb anyth-" Through watery eyes, Amy saw his whole face freeze. His hand moved to his throat – and to her horror, she saw a tiny tranquiliser dart sticking there to one side of his windpipe. Amy could only stare as his hand dropped heavily, and moments later, he crumpled to the ground.

"Doctor!" she screamed, shoving the ring box in her pocket and falling to her knees by his side. There was _definitely_ an audible click this time; she raised her head to see that a set of double doors that she had not noticed before on the far wall were now partway open…and that a figure was stepping out of the shadows beside them, the torchlight glinting off a solid steel object that moved before them. In a panic, Amy scrambled backwards, her hand falling on the communicator, which she snatched up. By the door, hard, hazel eyes narrowed over the barrel of a stocky gun; she flinched on reflex, and a stinging pain that she was almost expecting struck her in the shoulder. The eyes widened, and the figure moved forward, gun raised for another shot, but stopped short as their outline became visible in a flicker of glowing, translucent blue. Amy didn't hesitate – she stumbled to her feet and fled. Already, the drug in the dart was beginning to take hold – she almost fell against the doors to the hall, and by the time she was halfway up the stone steps, her legs felt like jelly and her arms like lead. The entrance to the Underhenge was a pool of soft light that shimmered unsteadily and seemed to take an eternity to reach – and then she was through and falling into the arms of a man in the uniform and armour of a Roman centurion.

"I think we found your Hengeghost…" she slurred as the centurion's blurred face faded to black.


	5. There's the Mark

A throbbing headache building behind right behind his temples was the first thing the Doctor became aware of when consciousness began to creep back into his mind. The second was that he was completely immobile from head to foot, and after a few attempts to raise an arm, he realized that it was not from a lingering effect of the sedative drug – his limbs were bound fast to a stone table by what felt like leather straps. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could make out his surroundings more clearly: a small room roughly hewn into the rock, with double doors leading presumably back into the hall with the Pandorica. What drew his attention immediately, though, at the very corner of his eye where he could only just turn his head enough to see clearly, was the figure sitting huddled with his knees drawn up to his chest on a stone bench carved into the wall.

The time on his own had clearly not done the Master any good. Between flashes of his now constantly dissipating life force, the Doctor could see that his face was pallid, dark circles stark under hollow eyes. Tattered and frayed, his clothes hung loosely off a painfully gaunt frame, and gashes were visible through several of the tears. He must have noticed the Doctor's motion, as he raised his head sharply and their eyes met.

"Straight to the carotid," the Doctor croaked. "Where did you learn to shoot Cyber-weapons like that?" Slowly, the Master sat up straight and pushed himself to his feet, making his way across the room to stand by the Doctor's feet. Watching his movements carefully, the Doctor could tell that he barely had the strength to remain standing – but proud as ever, he was refusing to let the Doctor see how much the effort cost him.

"Wasn't as clean as it should have been," he said coldly. "The girl got away."

"_Amy Pond_ has a name, and you know it perfectly well," the Doctor snapped. "You travelled with both of us for weeks – or did you forget to mention that when you sold out to the Daleks?" At first, the Master made no reply. He leaned back against the wall, arms folded, and looked slowly around the room. Then, a wry smile crossed his face.

"Well, isn't this just like old times?" he observed with a laugh. "You my helpless captive in a dark little cave, a clueless human female running around outside hoping for some incredible flash of luck to save her precious Doctor…"

"Same old goal, then?" the Doctor guessed. "What did they offer you this time – an equal share in universal domination?"

"Life," the Master answered simply.

"They're letting you _live_?" The Doctor's head sank back onto the cold stone.

"Oh, no. No, you misunderstood me, Doctor. _Life_," the Master hissed. Once again moving back into the Doctor's field of vision, he was no longer bothering to disguise his weakness. "There's a hundred alien civilizations up there, waiting – you must have some idea of the technology they have between them. Look at me, Doctor – I know you can see it. You had your chance to help me…"

"But…the TARDIS-"

"The _TARDIS_?" The Master's pinched features twisted into a sneer. "All your TARDIS can do is keep me alive – but I can still _feel_ it, Doctor. So hungry, all the time – I ate and ate, but…" For a moment, he faltered, and his voice dropped to a pained whisper; one hand crept up in an almost subconscious movement to clutch at his chest, the other to his stomach. "It _burns_. Doctor, I can feel it, burning inside me… _So_ much energy – but it's never enough, it just burns away – and it _hurts_, Doctor, I'm burning up, I can't- ah!" The rush of energy that surged through him was the most powerful the Doctor had seen yet, glowing from his failing body so intensely it almost lit up the dim little room. Doubled over, the Master appeared unable to speak for several minutes after it had passed; the Doctor could only watch as the other Time Lord fought to catch his breath, knelt in the centre of the room. For one hearts-stopping moment, his shoulders slumped, his hands dropped to the floor, and the Doctor thought that perhaps it was already too late – and then he raised his head and struggled to his feet. Leaning with both hands on the edge of the stone table for support, he once again met the Doctor's gaze.

"Surely you understand."

...

Amy awoke to the gentle touch of a hand smoothing her hair back from her forehead. She could feel a blanket covering her, and several more beneath her where she lay on the cool ground. Inhaling deeply the fresh night air, she slowly cracked her eyes open and allowed the owner of the hand to resolve into a helmeted head and armour-clad shoulders. A Roman… Amy was sure she'd had this dream before.

"C'mere, you…" she murmured sleepily – and he did, removing his helmet and lowering his face to brush warm lips across her cheek and press on her mouth. He wasn't a bad looking Roman, although certainly not as stunning as most of her usual fantasies – she supposed this was the part of the dream where she realized that he was the postman, or the P.E. teacher she had always hated in school, or her aunt's new neighbour…oh, but what did it matter? His kisses alone were more than lust or a simple animal attraction…they thrummed with pure, heartfelt _love_ – there was no other way of describing it.

"Rory, I would remind you of your duty," came a sharp, scolding voice from behind them, and the Roman pulled away.

"Oh no, it's fine – I don't mind," she tried to protest, but her voice went apparently unheard over the objection of the centurion, Rory.

"She's going to be my _wife_." The second voice merely laughed.

"She's been awake barely thirty seconds after a poison to the heart…"

"Actually, it's the central nervous system…"

"…I hardly think this fair lady has accepted your hand so soon."

"She will, in two thousand years." Rory's voice forbade argument, and still chuckling, the second Roman apparently departed.

"So, how many of you are there, you Romans?" Amy wondered.

"A dozen men, all volunteers," Rory replied. "Hardly a legion, I know, but-"

"Oh, I'm sure we can have _plenty_ of fun with a dozen Romans," Amy winked.

"Actually, I…I kind of thought…"

"Well, if you're not going to kiss me any more," she pouted, "I'll just have to go and-"

"No – Amy, wait." She had made to push herself up from the makeshift bed, but Rory's strong hand on her shoulder held her back. "Amy, it's me, Rory." She winced – her shoulder ached, and she remembered in a flash the dart that had caught her.

"This isn't a dream, is it?" she realized aloud.

"No," Rory whispered, his hand moving to cup Amy's cheek. "It's really me, Amy – I'm back."

"But…" Shaking her head, Amy pushed herself up into a sitting position for a better look at the centurion's face. A nice enough face – nose a bit on the large side, perhaps, but the blue-grey eyes that gazed imploringly into her own were clear and sincere…it was not a face she recognized. "I don't know you – I've never seen you before. Where's the Doctor?"

"No…" he whispered, a pained expression clouding his eyes. "You don't remember me. How?" In a sudden, desperate movement, he gripped both Amy's shoulders, eliciting a gasp as his fingers tightened around the bruise from the dart. "Amy, _how_ can you not remember me?"

"I…I'm sorry," she stammered. "Please, you're hurting me." Hastily, he released her and stepped back, shaking his head slowly.

"Amy, please, _look_ at me." Kneeling down in front of her, he set aside the helmet and spreading his hands in an almost begging gesture. "It's me. I'm…I'm Roman, but it's still me. Rory." The intensity of his pleading was beginning to frighten Amy, and she glanced around, edging backwards and clutching the blanket around herself.

"Leave…leave me alone." His face both confused her and tugged at her heartstrings, and she could feel those tears that had flowed so freely before threatening to resurface. "I want to see the Doctor – did they get him out?" There was a long pause while his eyes searched hers – and then his shoulders sagged; he picked up his helmet and replaced it, and when he spoke again, his words were lifeless.

"No. The door closed just after you came through. It's too heavy – we can't move it."

"What?" Amy's eyes widened and she stood up – too quickly, as a wave of dizziness swept through her and she had to close her eyes for a moment. "But the Doctor's down there – we _have_ to get him out – he was-"

"You were holding this when you came out," Rory interrupted, and held out the handheld communicator. "Call the Master – try talking to him."

"But that's who…" As she took the communicator and Rory turned away, something else dawned on her. "Hang on – how do you know about the Master?" But the Roman was already gone.

...

The Master had returned to his position on the stone bench at the edge of the room, where he had remained without another word. Even shattered as he was, the Doctor could see that he was brimming with nervous energy, folding and unfolding his hands across his knees before clenching them into fists and pressing them against his temples, and then lowering them to agitatedly gnaw on his knuckle. Each rumble of a distant spaceship far above sent his eyes darting upwards; the thought passed through the Doctor's mind that the Master was half expecting the Daleks to come bursting in the door at any moment, and was just as troubled about that thought as the Doctor – he considered commenting on it, but held his tongue. If the Master was even half as on edge as he appeared, he was liable to snap at any moment, and the Doctor didn't dare think about what might happen then. Still, staring at the ceiling would get him no closer to escaping.

"So, you heard me and Amy talking, then?" he said lightly; the Master jumped, head snapping around to glare at the Doctor.

"Oh, yes – very touching, I must say. Really, Doctor," he snorted, rolling his eyes, "how could I be gone? I was never quite all there, was I?" The Doctor winced, but was undeterred.

"So tell me – what _did_ happen to you? You had that TARDIS of your own – where did you go?"

"Have you ever tried to fly a telepathically controlled time capsule with concussion?" the Master retorted. "I crashed on Sqornshellous Zeta. By the time I left, my TARDIS had picked up the signal from Stonehenge. I came straight here. Call it morbid curiosity. Don't flatter yourself – the last thing I wanted was to run into you again."

"You're doing a bit more than running into me now, aren't you?" The Doctor tried to incline his head towards the straps that held him down. Uncomfortably aware of the seconds that were ticking by, he wondered just what his old foe wanted of him; it seemed an awful lot of trouble keeping him alive if he just needed to keep him out of the way while the Daleks accessed the Pandorica.

"I ran into that Cyberman first, when I broke in here." Searching his face for some clue as to why he was avoiding the question, the Doctor noticed the Master's eyes briefly flicker in an involuntary movement to the open wounds across his body. "Some kind of sentry…I killed it, but not before they'd worked out who I was – and what they could offer me."

"Who's 'they'? More Cybermen?" A wry smile crossed the Master's face.

"You really have no idea, do you? Oh, this has worked out even better than they planned…"

"All right, so you're not telling me your big plans," the Doctor said, trying to keep his voice nonchalant. "I wouldn't either. I'm sure I'll hear enough of your gloating later." He was concerned to note that the Master was unable to hide a smirk, but kept his own face a mask of resignation. "You're in quite a state, you know. What about that TARDIS keeping you alive 'as well as any other'?"

"It was weak."

"You mean you forced it to bind to you and it drained all its energy trying to keep you alive."

"It died," the Master shrugged. His obvious total lack of regret sent a chill down the Doctor's spine. The strange time engine that the Master had taken had certainly not been a TARDIS of Gallifreyan origin, and it was like nothing the Doctor had ever encountered before, but that didn't mean there was no chance it was a sentient capsule like his own. Even if it wasn't, its similarities were enough to bring the most tormenting ideas crawling to the surface of his mind – just the _thought_ of his own beloved TARDIS being sucked dry of life, its fate callously dismissed as nothing more than an inconvenience, made him feel queasy with horror…and that little ember of doubt that had smouldered unnoticed within him for some time now flared up, brighter than ever.

"I still had hope for you…" He had voiced it aloud before he had even quite realized what was dawning unbidden on him.

"'Had'?" The Master raised his eyebrows as if in idle curiosity, but his eyes were unreadable, and the Doctor returned his gaze to the ceiling. All of a sudden, he couldn't bear to look at what remained of his once-friend. "You had your chance a _long_ time ago."

"You have your chance now," said the Doctor dully. "You always said you wanted to kill me with your own hands. What are you waiting for?"

"For the Pandorica…"

...

By the time the communicator crackled to life in Amy's hand, she was beginning to feel the chill of the night air. The blanket, which smelled rather strongly of horse, was keeping the worst of the cold off, but the ground beneath her was beginning to grow damp with dew and a fresh breeze was blowing in across the moor, numbing her fingers around the nearly-forgotten communicator.

"Doctor? You're completely surrounded," River's voice buzzed from the tinny speaker, startling Amy nearly into dropping the device. "Doctor, are you there? _Doctor_?" Fumbling awkwardly in the flickering light, Amy eventually managed to locate a large button that she thought could have been the answer button, and pressed it hard.

"River, it's me."

"Amy, tell the Doctor it's too late to run – the ships-"

"He's…he's not here," Amy stammered. "I'm sorry, River – he…that door, that rock, it closed. We were attacked – he's still down there." There was a sharp intake of breath, but when River spoke again, her voice was brisk and businesslike.

"I'll bring the TARDIS – you'll never move that rock with just those Romans."

"P-please hurry," Amy urged her. "I don't know what he's going to do to him – and the Pan-"

"Who?" River interrupted sharply. "Amy, what- …_who_ attacked you?"

"Mister Sa- …the Master."

"He should be dead." All of a sudden, River's voice became low, barely audible – and then the line went silent, and Amy was left searching for the face of the centurion, Rory, in the small group of Romans who stood about the Henge, with the inexplicable sensation that strange as the face was to her, it would offer some comfort.


	6. Revelation of the Romans

It didn't take River long to find the TARDIS nestled between the trees on the fog-shrouded hill overlooking the Roman camp. The door was unlocked and pushed open easily, to her relief.

_At least _she_ knows what's good for her_, she mused, running her hands across the controls. To her consternation, the takeoff was unsettlingly rough, the passage into the vortex accompanied by a heavy, mechanical clunking.

"All right, it's only me," she soothed the capsule as her fingers danced across the keys of an old- fashioned typewriter that had been wired into the console beneath the screen. Still, the TARDIS was frustratingly unresponsive to her touch, the characters on the screen flickering erratically, temporal coordinates seeming almost to refuse to land where she instructed. The whole room was jolting and lurching, almost as though the TARDIS had been picked up and flung into a violent whirlwind of time. "Come on, you know me, don't you? Don't you?"

The bumpy ride couldn't have been over quickly enough for the increasingly anxious River. On the screen, the view had faded out entirely, replaced by white noise and fractal-like static. Gripping the communicator tightly in one hand, she gave it a solid whack before hurrying for the door.

Unseen at her back, the flickering screen was gradually resolving itself into readable characters:

LOCATION: Earth  
>DATE: 2606/2010

They remained for several seconds while a high-pitched electronic whistling emitted from the tinny speakers; and then the screen flared brightly, as if a power surge had pulsed through the circuits of the TARDIS, cracking the screen clean in two. As the image faded, the speakers once again burst into life, and a low, demonic voice rasped through the console room.

"Silence will fall…"

Outside, a puzzled River was narrowing her eyes at the scene she had stepped out into. She certainly hadn't made it to the Pandorica, that much was immediately obvious – she had emerged into the clear air of a balmy summer night. Beyond the lush hedges that surrounded the TARDIS, she could see a rusting swing set overgrown with dry grass, a trellis arch covered in ivy, leafy trees that whispered as a gust of wind picked up across the garden. Holding her scanner out before her and removing a torch from her pocket, she began to walk down the concrete path beneath her feet towards a silent, stone house that loomed over her, its dark windows like vacant eye sockets surveying her every movement. The device registered something almost immediately, bleeping to alert River, who swung her torch from side to side. A darkened patch on the lawn caught her eye and she bent to examine it. The grass had been flattened, charred to black in a pattern that repeated itself several feet to one side: a spaceship had landed here, and recently – the signs were unmistakeable. Raising her head, her apprehension only grew – the door to the house had been taken clear off its hinges and rested against the wall in the deserted hallway.

In her hand, the scanner was still indecisive – whatever it was picking up traces of was clearly too faint to identify – but moving from side to side, its faint beeping rose and fell in frequency, and she cautiously stepped over the threshold of the house.

Aside from the door, no sign of damage was visible in the deserted hallway. The whole place was lifeless, but despite the unsettling emptiness and the warm stillness of the air, River couldn't shake the nagging sensation that _something_ knew she was there. Lowering her hand briefly to the reassuring weight of her gun at her hip, she began to creep up the steep staircase, still following the trail of residue being detected by her scanner. It led to a closed door; River hesitated only for a moment before pushing it open and raising her torch high, flicking the beam back and forth with the unmistakeable manner of an archaeologist venturing into a sealed tomb.

The room was a bedroom, as empty as the rest of the house, with an iron-wrought double bed in the centre and a dresser against the opposite wall, which the light from her torch fell on. Drawn inexorably towards it, a sinking feeling descended on her as it occurred to her whose room she was now standing in even before she reached it…and there was the proof. Laid out as though the occupant of the room had been examining them only the day before, tiny figurines were scattered across the surface; the same three caricatures over and over, some in clay with brown and white and red wool for hair, some in cardboard with green and gold sequin eyes. Beside the mirror, a box was filled nearly to the brim with crayon and pencil drawings in the carefree hand of a child – again, that tall, solid, paternal figure with the dark hair and wide grin, hand-in-hand with a tiny girl, and on his other side and apart from the two, a slightly smaller, black-clad shape outlined in jagged blue.

"Oh, Amy…" River murmured, tearing her eyes away with a sick knot settling in her stomach. Behind a cardboard box painted in the distinctive semblance of a blue police box, half-protruding from beneath a thick, dog-eared paperback, she found her attention drawn to what appeared to be a children's picture book and held the torch closer, frowning. Above a stylized, red lipstick print, a gold-embossed name on the black cover of the heavy paperback reflected the light, and River swept it roughly aside to pick up the picture book.

"The Story of Roman Britain," the title read. Peering closer, it occurred to River with confusion and then dawning horror that the Roman commander pictured drawing his sword on the cover looked uncannily familiar – in fact, she could almost hear his voice now.

"_A place more deadly and more powerful and more impatient than their tiny minds can imagine."_

And beside that, the final piece clicked into place as the torchlight illuminated another children's book: "The Legend of Pandora's Box" – and its illustration of a cube engraved with rings of symbols on its sides.

Heart leaping into her mouth, she dropped the book as though it were poison and hurried from the room and its indelible ghosts.

...

"Twitchy, aren't we?"

A low, groaning rumble had begun to reverberate through the cavern, momentarily startling both Time Lords, although the Doctor was the first to recover his composure. Face like a mask, the Master rose and headed for the door that led into the main hall. He pushed it open and a sickly light spilled through, lending an unnatural tinge to his pale face.

"You're looking a bit green," the Doctor said. "What's the matter – are the Daleks early?"

"Shut up." Leaving the door open, the Master moved back to the stone table that restrained the Doctor.

"Well, what is it? What's that noise?"

"It's ready," the Master replied shortly. His hands were now fumbling at the strap around one of the Doctor's wrists, and the Doctor couldn't help but notice that the normally dextrous fingers were somewhat clumsy.

"Ah yes, the Pandorica… So, what's coming out, then?" The Master made no reply, but as the wrist strap fell away and he moved onto the one around the Doctor's head, he could no longer keep his eyes averted. "Is it something to do with the cracks?" the Doctor persisted.

"The cracks?" the Master echoed, and the Doctor was surprised to read genuine confusion written on his face.

"Yes, the cracks. Cracks in time – you saw them," the Doctor replied. He could feel a crackling of energy where the burning fingertips brushed his forehead as they undid the restraints. "Something in the future – something big – is going to explode, and every moment in history will crack around it. Watch out, you're making my hair stand on end." The Master shot him a glare, but it was half-hearted and with barely a fraction of the usual intensity.

"Believe it or not, I'm not trying to blow up reality this time." His amber-hazel gaze was listless, and the Doctor thought he was beginning to understand: the Master was beyond caring. As he had been when he attempted to harness the power of the Eye of Harmony so long ago, as he had been when he opened the heart of the TARDIS to steal the Doctor's regenerations before the Time War, he was on the brink of death, teetering on a precipice, so desperate that he no longer even thought of the consequences of his actions. And this time, he was possibly even more dangerous than ever – the Doctor could believe all too easily that he honestly had no idea what greater game they had both become pawns in.

"Please, you have to listen," The Doctor reached up with his free hand to seize the Master's bony wrist, but the other Time Lord shook him off, moving to the straps around the Doctor's ankles. "Whatever's coming out of that Pando-"

"Don't try to escape," the Master growled. "The Autons have been activated – they'll be here any second."

"Autons?"

"Yes, Autons. I must say, I didn't think they would fool even you that easily." The Doctor's hearts were racing, but he forced his voice to remain steady. Whatever information he could glean from the Master could be vital, now more than ever.

"The Romans," he guessed. "Plastic Romans. Amy's favourite subject at school – did you tell them that?"

"Better. I showed them where she grew up." The Doctor was sickened to hear the trace of pride in the Master's voice. "Structures hold psychic residues, you know that – that's why houses have ghosts. The Nestene took a snapshot of Amy's memories and constructed a whole scenario – just for you, Doctor. Once they knew enough about you and your companion, they could build the perfect trap."

"Right. You've got me, well done." The Doctor drew a deep breath. "Now what happens to Amy? Tell me, _what happens to Amy_?"

...

Amy's fingers had been moving rhythmically over the small, firm object in her hand for some time before she realized that she was caressing the velvety surface of the ring box that was still in her pocket. Slowly, she drew it out, cupping her hands around it and holding it close. Again, her eyes swept over the group of Romans; the feeling that she was searching for something was tugging at her, and she found herself scrutinizing their faces closely as if they could remind her…remind her of _what_?

"_You haven't forgotten, Amy…"_

"Yes I have," she whispered, her voice choked with stifling tears. The centurion she had spoken to, Rory, was meeting her eyes again – or was it that she was meeting his?

"_Amy, how can you not remember me?"_

Her ears were ringing; she shook her head hard, but the sound continued – a high-pitched buzzing whine, not unlike that of the sonic screwdriver, filling the air, growing louder and louder. She glanced around at the Romans and her blood ran cold – they didn't appear to have heard anything – but seconds later, her heart skipped a beat when, as one, they slumped over at the waist like a dozen lifeless puppets. The air stood still; the noise had stopped, and she realized that the whole sky was suddenly as silent as the stone of the Henge – the spaceships, too, had ceased their whirling and spinning and hung like a glowing mobile in the black sky. And then, simultaneously, the Romans straightened, staring ahead with blank, glassy eyes.

A cry caught in Amy's throat. Still clutching the ring box in one hand, she lowered her other hand to the ground, and something passed across the expressionless face of the nearest Roman, Rory. The blue-grey eyes locked onto the ring box and swam into focus, and all at once, he was _alive_, more than ever, anguish twisting his face.

Without warning, a rending explosion shattered the air, and Amy had to fling up her arms to shield her face, back pressed against a stone pillar. When she lowered them, dust was settling on the grass and she saw that the massive stone slab in the centre of the circle had been reduced to rubble. Glittering forms that she recognized as Cybermen were visible descending into the Earth, and the Romans were following, their movements stiff and perfectly unified – except for one. Rory still faced her, feet planted as though resisting a magnetic pull, eyes fixed on her as though his life depended on it.

"No…" he moaned. "No, I'm not going. I'm Rory, I'm Rory…" He took a lurching step towards her, and she cried out before she could help herself.

"No – get away!" He flinched as though he had been struck and his arm jerked upwards, fingers extended towards her. To her horror, his hand seemed to fall open before her eyes, fingers breaking away and swinging downwards unnaturally as if on some sort of hinge, revealing what was unmistakeably the barrel of a pistol.

...

"I shouldn't think they need her for anything," the Master shrugged.

"So let her go," the Doctor pleaded as the final strap around his other arm fell away. "You've got me – just let her-"

"Get up," the Master ordered, and the Doctor obeyed, sitting up stiffly on the hard concrete slab and swinging his legs over the side. Footsteps could be heard approaching across the hall, and two Roman centurions appeared at the door, the green glow of the Pandorica shimmering in their artificial eyes.

"The Pandorica is ready," they announced in unison, striding forwards and gripping the Doctor's arms, one on either side to pull him to his feet.

"For _what_?" Shaking his head, the Doctor attempted to struggle free, but the grip of the plastic fingers was unyielding. "What's in there – are you going to give me to it? Is this what it takes to kill me?" Leading the way as the Autons dragged the Doctor towards the door, the Master turned his head to smile coldly.

"You're right on one count, you know – we _are_ giving you to it."

"We are giving you to the Pandorica," came a harsh, metallic voice. As the Doctor emerged into the hall, his knees nearly gave way at the sight that met him. There was the Dalek that had spoken – the white Supreme Dalek that had escaped with its ship in 1941. Behind it stood several rows of Cybermen, their hollow eyes facing him as one spoke.

"Your limits and capacities have been extrapolated."

"There will be no escape." A barking, military voice – a Sontaran commander, stood with his troops opposite the Dalek and Cybermen. At the words, the Master laughed mirthlessly.

"Yes – _such_ a pity you won't be able to tell me how it feels."

...

River was barely thinking about a destination as she frantically pulled levers all around the TARDIS console – all she knew was that she had to get away from that place as fast as she could, had to get to the Doctor and warn him. As it began to dematerialize, the entire capsule rocked violently, throwing her to the ground. Sparks flew from the control panel, the lights flared, bulbs on the panel blew out in a shower of glass splinters…and over the agonized grinding of the time rotor, an inhuman voice reached her ears.

"Silence will fall. Silence will fall."

She scrambled to her feet and raced for the door; it was locked fast. Wasting no time on futile tugging, she returned to the console and tugged a lead from beneath the control panel to run it to the door. The controls fizzed and blew even as she reached for them. Ignoring the white-hot sparks that stung her skin, she smacked her hands onto every emergency landing control that she could think of, but still the TARDIS continued its erratic shuddering, as though it were being controlled by some outside force that was determined to shake it to pieces.

"Silence will fall…"

Finally, the door sprung open, only to reveal an impenetrable wall of grey stone, and River slammed her hands on it in despair.

...

"Amy…Amy, you have to run." Rory sounded as if he barely had control over his own tongue, forcing the words out as he advanced on Amy. "I'll kill you – I can't stop it – please, _run_, Amy!" With her back pressed against the cold stone, Amy could only shake her head, mouth dry with fear as the centurion and the barrel of his pistol grew closer.

"You…you can't," she croaked.

"I can't help it – please, Amy…" he gritted out through clenched teeth. "No, no, _no_…no, I don't want to…I'm Rory, I'm Rory, I'm _Rory_…" He was clinging to the words as though they were a lifeline, and the only thread holding him back was about to snap – she could see it failing, see the dazed film creeping back over his imploring eyes – the pistol was inches from her side now, Rory's face so close to hers…and then, like a dying man clutching at a straw, his other hand reached for hers and closed around the ring box, and all of a sudden, they were both hanging precariously from the same lifeline.

"Rory…" she breathed. "My Ror-" Her words were cut off in a cry as an icy sting stabbed her in the side, sending raw pain flooding through her bones like liquid nitrogen. The last thing she was aware of was the arms of the centurion closing around her, catching her as she slumped down and the world spun away to nothing.

...

The interior of the Pandorica was all too clear now as the Doctor was pulled towards it by the two Autons. A sterile, white light shone off cold steel in the form of a chair – an inescapable throne of bonds and restraints that opened as he drew closer, steel bands parting like welcoming arms, ready to close around him and never release him.

More and more witnesses were arriving now, stepping out of the shadows as though they had been standing there all along or beaming out of thin air with teleport technology of a hundred civilizations. Silurians, Roboforms, Sycorax, forming an aisle down the centre of the hall, a troop of Judoon materializing behind the watching Master.

"But…_why_?" the Doctor gasped as the Autons forced him down into the chair and the steel bands began to close around him.

"It is confirmed – the cracks in the universe are the work of the Doctor," the Dalek grated out.

"And _we_ will save the universe from _you_," the Sontaran commander crowed.

"_What_?" The Doctor tried to shake his head, but a steel vice had lowered and he could barely move enough to turn a pleading glance on the Master. "No, not me – the TARDIS. The TARDIS is exploding at every moment in history." Try as he might, he couldn't catch the Master's eye, but the other Time Lord was beginning to look uneasy.

"The Doctor is the only one who can pilot the TARDIS," said a Cyberman. "You will be prevented."

"No – no, he's not…" The Master's eyes had widened at the words, darting between the aliens who watched the Pandorica gleefully as its impenetrable walls began to slide shut.

"Seal the Pandorica," the Dalek instructed.

"Please – it's happening right _now_, and I'm the only one who can stop it. The whole universe will never have existed…" The Doctor's words fell on deaf ears as the beam of light from the inside of the Pandorica grew narrower, but realization was descending like Arctic water on one member of the unholy, _impossible_ alliance.

"Stop – you've got it wrong!" The Master took a step towards the Pandorica, his voice rising to a hoarse shout.

"Silence!" the Dalek screeched.

"But you're all _wrong_ – don't you see, you can't- _ah_!" Overtaking him in one easy step and throwing out a single meaty arm, one of the Judoon struck him across the chest, flinging him back against a rocky outcrop.

The last glimmer of light from the Pandorica vanished behind the sealing edges of the grey cube.

A lone centurion screamed into the sky, cradling the limp body of a young woman.

Somewhere and everywhere, the golden heart of the TARDIS became a blazing cataclysm of energy and fire and time.

And silence fell.

* * *

><p><strong>THE END<strong>

By Aietradaea

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes:<strong>

And there it is - another installment in this AU ticked off. Not many plot deviations in this one, but lots of little hints right through it and "The Lodger" to say what the big twist is going to be in "The Big Bang" - 'cause YES, I am doing that one too! :D (No promises when, I'm afraid, but I _will_ do it - watch this space!)

Love reviews, of course.

Remember, if you want to follow this AU and its subsequent installments, add _me_ to your Alerts, not this fic - each episode is a separate fic, and this one's done and dusted.

Anyone want an ambiguous teaser line for "The Big Bang"? ;)

-Aietradaea:)


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